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New approaches to researching patient safety

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  • Iedema, Rick

Abstract

This article presents an overview of contemporary research into patient safety. The article suggests that patient safety research to date has tended to privilege the formal and structural dimensions of safety at the expense of the social and affective dimensions of safety. The article previews the research articles brought together in this special issue of Social Science & Medicine, paying particular attention to the impact of these studies on the field of patient safety research generally. The present article summarises this impact in the form of the following three patient safety research principles. First, to account for whether and how safe and improvement-oriented practice is achieved, research must engage with both the predictability and the complexity of the sites and processes it seeks to describe, explain and/or impact on. Second, engaging with complexity implicates researchers in experiencing it, and this implicates the research process and its methodology in a process of sense-making of the practical and affective consequences for and with practitioners inhabiting and enacting that complexity. Third, besides numerically-based descriptions, abstracted explanations and procedural prescriptions, patient safety research evidence must encompass experiential data, collaboratively-produced accounts and/or experience-based designs.

Suggested Citation

  • Iedema, Rick, 2009. "New approaches to researching patient safety," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 1701-1704, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:69:y:2009:i:12:p:1701-1704
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    1. Benn, Jonathan & Burnett, Susan & Parand, Anam & Pinto, Anna & Iskander, Sandra & Vincent, Charles, 2009. "Studying large-scale programmes to improve patient safety in whole care systems: Challenges for research," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 1767-1776, December.
    2. Zuiderent-Jerak, Teun & Strating, Mathilde & Nieboer, Anna & Bal, Roland, 2009. "Sociological refigurations of patient safety; ontologies of improvement and 'acting with' quality collaboratives in healthcare," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 1713-1721, December.
    3. Whyte, Sarah & Cartmill, Carrie & Gardezi, Fauzia & Reznick, Richard & Orser, Beverley A. & Doran, Diane & Lingard, Lorelei, 2009. "Uptake of a team briefing in the operating theatre: A Burkean dramatistic analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 1757-1766, December.
    4. Iedema, Rick & Jorm, Christine & Lum, Martin, 2009. "Affect is central to patient safety: The horror stories of young anaesthetists," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 1750-1756, December.
    5. Waring, Justin J., 2009. "Constructing and re-constructing narratives of patient safety," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 1722-1731, December.
    6. Vincent, Charles, 2009. "Social scientists and patient safety: Critics or contributors?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 1777-1779, December.
    7. Mesman, Jessica, 2009. "The geography of patient safety: A topical analysis of sterility," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 1705-1712, December.
    8. Boreham, N. C. & Shea, C. E. & Mackway-Jones, K., 2000. "Clinical risk and collective competence in the hospital emergency department in the UK," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 83-91, July.
    9. Ovretveit, John, 2009. "The contribution of new social science research to patient safety," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 1780-1783, December.
    10. Hewett, David G. & Watson, Bernadette M. & Gallois, Cindy & Ward, Michael & Leggett, Barbara A., 2009. "Intergroup communication between hospital doctors: Implications for quality of patient care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 1732-1740, December.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Nicolini, Davide & Waring, Justin & Mengis, Jeanne, 2011. "Policy and practice in the use of root cause analysis to investigate clinical adverse events: Mind the gap," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 217-225, July.
    3. Ducey, Ariel & Donoso, Claudia & Ross, Sue & Robert, Magali, 2020. "From anatomy to patient experience in pelvic floor surgery: Mindlines, evidence, responsibility, and transvaginal mesh," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).
    4. Prentice, Rachel, 2018. "How surgery became a global public health issue," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 17-23.
    5. Doherty, Carole & Saunders, Mark N.K., 2013. "Elective surgical patients' narratives of hospitalization: The co-construction of safety," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 29-36.
    6. Hooker, Claire & Hor, Suyin & Wyer, Mary & Gilbert, Gwendolyn L. & Jorm, Christine & Iedema, Rick, 2020. "Trajectories of hospital infection control: Using non-representational theory to understand and improve infection prevention and control," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 256(C).

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